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So-Called 'Free Trade' Policies Hurt US Workers Every Time We Pass Them |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=24193"><span class="small">Bernie Sanders, Guardian UK</span></a>
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Friday, 01 May 2015 08:42 |
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Sanders writes: "America's trade agreements benefit large multinational corporations and Wall Street, but are a disaster for working families. We must defeat the TPP."
Senator Bernie Sanders. (photo: Bob Clark/Getty)
So-Called 'Free Trade' Policies Hurt US Workers Every Time We Pass Them
By Bernie Sanders, Guardian UK
01 May 15
America’s trade agreements benefit large multinational corporations and Wall Street, but are a disaster for working families. We must defeat the TPP
 lbert Einstein said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. As the middle class continues to decline and the gap between the very rich and everyone else grows wider, we should keep that in mind as Congress debates the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the largest trade agreement in American history.
Trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), the Central American Free Trade Agreement (Cafta) and the granting of Permanent Normal Trade Relations to China have been abysmal failures: they allowed corporations to shut down operations in the US and move work to low-wage countries where people are forced to work for pennies an hour; and they are one of the reasons that we have lost almost 60,000 factories in our country and millions of good-paying jobs since 2001.
The TPP is simply the continuation of a failed approach to trade – an approach which benefits large multinational corporations and Wall Street, but which is a disaster for working families. The TPP must be defeated, but our overall trade policy must also change for corporations to start investing in America and creating jobs here again, and not just in China and other low wage countries.
Before even Congress votes on any final trade agreement, the President has asked for “fast track authority” (also called Trade Promotion Authority or TPA) to complete TPP negotiations with 11 other countries. Fast track would relinquish Congress’s constitutional authority to the President to “regulate commerce with foreign nations”, limit our debate and prevent members of Congress from improving trade agreements to benefit the American people.
I intend to do everything I can to defeat both fast track and the overall TPP agreement. Our goal in Congress must be to make sure that American-made products, not American jobs, are our number-one export. We’ll never be able to do that if we enact the TPP and continue negotiating other treaties based on the same failed policies.
For instance, two of the countries in the TPP are Vietnam and Malaysia. In Vietnam, the minimum wage is equivalent to 56 cents an hour, independent labor unions are banned and people are thrown in jail for expressing their political beliefs or trying to improve labor conditions. In Malaysia, migrant workers who manufacture electronics products are working as modern-day slave laborers who have had their passports and wages confiscated and are unable to return to their own countries. American workers should not have to “compete” against people forced to work under these conditions. This is not “free trade”; it is a race to the bottom.
And this “free trade” agreement focuses on much more than just buying and selling goods. It is part of an effort to boost the profits of large corporations and Wall Street by offshoring jobs, undercutting worker rights, and dismantling labor, environmental, health, food safety and financial laws. Under TPP, for instance, Vietnamese companies would be able to compete with American companies for federal contracts funded by US taxpayers, undermining “Buy American” laws.
The TPP would also threaten US sovereignty by giving foreign corporations the right to challenge before international tribunals any law that could reduce their “expected future profits”. This provision, known as the Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), has allowed Phillip Morris to sue Uruguay from its headquarters in Switzerland over the former’s laws designed to discourage children and pregnant women from smoking. The French utility, Veolia, is suing Egypt under these same provisions over an increase in the national minimum wage.
In addition to harming American workers, the TPP would increase the price of life-saving prescription drugs in poor countries by making it harder for them to obtain affordable generic drugs. That’s why Doctors without Borders has said: “the TPP agreement is on track to become the most harmful trade pact ever for access to medicines in developing countries.”
Supporters of the TPP claim that this treaty will create good-paying jobs in the United States and reduce the trade deficit – but that’s exactly what they said about Nafta, PNTR with China, and the South Korea trade agreement, among others, and they have been proven dead wrong each and every time.
In 1993, President Clinton promised that Nafta would create 200,000 American jobs in two years; instead, Nafta has led to the loss of more than 680,000 jobs. In 1999, we were promised that PNTR with China would open up the Chinese economy to American made goods and services; instead, it led to the loss of more than 2.7m American jobs. In 2011, the US Chamber of Commerce told us that the South Korea free trade agreement would create some 280,000 jobs; instead, it has led to the loss of some 60,000 jobs.
Enough is enough! If we are serious about rebuilding the middle class and creating the millions of good paying jobs we desperately need, we must fundamentally rewrite our trade policies. We must not give the president – let alone the next one –fast track authority, and we must defeat the TPP.
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Hillary Expected to Adopt All of Sanders's Positions by Noon |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=9160"><span class="small">Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker</span></a>
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Thursday, 30 April 2015 13:26 |
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Borowitz writes: "Within minutes of Sanders's entry into the Democratic race, Clinton released position papers on trade, income inequality, national defense, and the environment that meticulously aped the Vermont senator's views on those matters."
Sen. Bernie Sanders. (photo: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg)
Hillary Expected to Adopt All of Sanders's Positions by Noon
By Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker
30 April 15
 The article below is satire. Andy Borowitz is an American comedian and New York Times-bestselling author who satirizes the news for his column, "The Borowitz Report." 
 emocratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is on pace to adopt rival Bernie Sanders’s positions on all major issues by noon on Thursday, Clinton campaign officials have confirmed.
Within minutes of Sanders’s entry into the Democratic race, Clinton released position papers on trade, income inequality, national defense, and the environment that meticulously aped the Vermont senator’s views on those matters.
Awaking at 8 A.M., Sanders, who had planned to run to the left of Clinton in 2016, discovered that, while he was sleeping, she had already begun running slightly to the left of him.
In an online video posted Thursday morning, Clinton welcomed Sanders to the race, adding, “To those who agree with Bernie Sanders on the issues, let me say this: I am Bernie Sanders.”
Sanders, who had scheduled a speech in Vermont for 11 A.M. on Thursday, cancelled it abruptly, saying, “Hillary already said everything I was going to say an hour ago.”
The Vermont politician told reporters that now he was unsure whether he would even continue with his campaign. “I don’t know anymore,” he said, visibly shaken. “I just don’t know.”
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No, Freddie Gray Didn't Kill Himself |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=28850"><span class="small">Michael Daly, The Daily Beast</span></a>
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Thursday, 30 April 2015 13:20 |
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Daly writes: "Before the second prisoner was even in the police van, Freddie Gray asked the police for medical assistance. So you have to wonder why on earth a man who had just asked for help would then try to hurt himself - as the second prisoner supposedly concluded after he was picked up at the next stop a few minutes later."
Freddie Gray being arrested in Baltimore. (photo: CBS)
No, Freddie Gray Didn't Kill Himself
By Michael Daly, The Daily Beast
30 April 15
ALSO SEE: Baltimore Rioter Turned Himself in - but Family Can't Afford $500,000 Bail
Someone leaked a police document to the Washington Post claiming he was trying to hurt himself inside a police van—minutes after he asked for medical assistance.
 efore the second prisoner was even in the police van, Freddie Gray asked the police for medical assistance.
So you have to wonder why on earth a man who had just asked for help would then try to hurt himself — as the second prisoner supposedly concluded after he was picked up at the next stop a few minutes later.
The opinion of the second prisoner is reportedly contained in a search-warrant application prepared by a police investigator and now leaked to The Washington Post.
Somebody leaked the sealed document for a reason, just as the police were preparing to turn over the results of their investigation to the Baltimore state’s attorney. There is nothing to stop the Baltimore Police Department from also publicly disclosing its major findings, as it largely did after its initial investigation soon after Gray’s death. The only significant detail the BPD added on Thursday while announcing its probe was complete was that private security video indicated the van had made an additional, previously unreported stop.
Police taking action during protesting in Baltimore. (photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty)
But what the police have already disclosed is enough to suggest why the second prisoner might have believed Gray was trying to hurt himself—and why he was almost certainly mistaken
After the stop where he asked for medical assistance and medical assistance was denied to him, Gray seems to have resumed signaling his need for help by the only means available—by banging on the inside of the van.
Gray may even have imagined that the police were heeding him when the van stopped again a few minutes later.
Imagine his desperation when he realized that the van had stopped only to pick up another prisoner. Gray’s resumed banging must have been all the more insistent, all the more frantic.
As reported by The Washington Post, the second prisoner came to the conclusion that Gray was trying to hurt himself without ever actually seeing him, the two of them having been separated by a metal partition.
The second prisoner could only have based his opinion on the sounds of Gray banging against the inside of the van.
And the banging must have been pretty frantic indeed for it to seem that Gray was trying to hurt himself.
More likely, what sounded to the prisoner like an effort to self-inflict injury was a renewed plea for assistance.
Gray had learned at the time of his arrest that the police seemed deaf to his cries of pain.
All Gray could do once he was locked inside the van was bang on the interior. And that banging prompted the police to make three prior stops.
At the first, the police found Gray to be “irate” and “combative.” They then placed him in leg irons.
Gray also could have simply been frantic, and he had kept banging loud enough for the police to stop a second time five minutes later, and call for a cop to check on him in the back.
The purpose of that banging seems to have been made clear when Gray asked for medical assistance. The police response was apparently limited to lifting him off the floor of the van where he had apparently fallen and returning him to the bench.
The van then rode on with Gray continuing to signal his distress, along that way making a third stop for reason the BPD has not disclosed or simply not yet determined. He most likely thought that his banging was prompting a fourth stop when the van again pulled over, and that medical assistance might be near.
But all that happened was another prisoner was loaded aboard, unseen and unseeing behind the metal partition. Gray was now apparently so desperate in his banging for help that he led the other prisoner to believe he was trying to injure himself.
Just six blocks later, the van arrived at the police station. The banging ceased, but not because Gray believed that he was getting help. It stopped because he was unconscious.
Medical assistance finally came in the person of paramedics who transported him to a shock trauma hospital, where he later died.
Now it is up to the authorities to tell us what they know before leakers manage to deflect us from the full truth.
At least we already know enough to reach a conclusion: If it sounded like Gray sought to injure himself in that van, it was after he had been making those very same sounds to signal he needed help.
The banging that second prisoner heard was the banging of a man who was just six blocks away from being beyond all help.
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Feds Are Trying to Scare You Away From Using Encryption |
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Thursday, 30 April 2015 13:18 |
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Kopstein writes: "For months, the FBI, the National Security Agency and an alphabet soup of other spooky agencies have been lashing out at tech companies that have responded to former NSA contractor Edward Snowden's surveillance revelations by starting to protect customers with stronger encryption. But it's increasingly obvious that the government's crypto panic is powered by fear, not facts."
Department of Homeland Security director Jeh Johnson. (photo: Robert Galbraith/Reuters/Landov)
Feds Are Trying to Scare You Away From Using Encryption
By Joshua Kopstein, Al Jazeera America
30 April 15
Federal agencies say encryption will doom us, but they’re already using spy tools that circumvent it
 or months, the FBI, the National Security Agency and an alphabet soup of other spooky agencies have been lashing out at tech companies that have responded to former NSA contractor Edward Snowden’s surveillance revelations by starting to protect customers with stronger encryption. But it’s increasingly obvious that the government’s crypto panic is powered by fear, not facts.
Last week at the RSA security conference in San Francisco, Department of Homeland Security Director Jeh Johnson begged Silicon Valley companies to give the government access to encrypted communications, asking the crowd to “imagine the problems if well after the advent of the telephone, the warrant authority of the government to investigate crime had extended only to the U.S. mail.”
“Imagine an America where federal, state and municipal law enforcement agencies cannot access critical communications, even when legally authorized to do so,” begins a recent Wall Street Journal blog post written by Amy Hess, the FBI’s executive assistant director. “Imagine the injustice if a suspected criminal can hide incriminating communications without fear of discovery by the police or if information that could exonerate an innocent party is inaccessible.”
The reason the FBI, Homeland Security and other agencies want us to imagine these frightening scenarios is that their encryption problem is just that: imaginary. It’s built on the false premise that making encryption more accessible will allow criminals to shield themselves from the law. The only solution, the government says, is for companies to put backdoors into their devices and apps, which by definition means installing defects that make our data more vulnerable to criminals and spies.
One need look only at what law enforcement agencies are doing in secret to see that these predictions of digital anarchy are pure fantasy.
Earlier this month, Motherboard reporter Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai discovered that the Drug Enforcement Administration has been buying hacking tools from an Italian company, Hacking Team, through a shell company based in Maryland. The software, Remote Control System, is a remote host-based interception suite that allows police to infect devices, steal passwords, intercept Skype calls and even monitor targets in real time through their webcams. Researchers discovered it (and a competing product, FinFisher) is being used to spy on journalists and activists in Morocco, Ethiopia, the United Arab Emirates and other countries with notoriously poor human rights records.
Here’s how Hacking Team advertises the software (emphasis added):
You cannot stop your targets from moving. How can you keep chasing them? What you need is a way to bypass encryption, collect relevant data out of any device and keep monitoring your targets wherever they are, even outside your monitoring domain. Remote Control System does exactly that.
These kinds of tools aren’t new, but their recent prevalence as commercial products underscores how government agencies are increasingly utilizing hacker techniques. The FBI has been in the hacking business for more than a decade, and it recently won new powers to hack computers even when their user and location are unknown. This despite the fact that in 2013, a judge in Texas rejected an FBI request to send spyware to an unknown suspect’s computer, saying the agency offered “little more than vague assurances” that it wouldn’t intrude on innocents in the process.
From a practical standpoint, these tactics make sense. Encryption protects data using impossibly complicated math, and it’s infinitely easier to solve complicated math problems by stealing the answers than by cracking the code. The strongest encryption in the world won’t save you if someone can get inside your computer and steal your encryption keys, and products such as Remote Control System and FinFisher are giving those capabilities to police and governments around the globe.
It might also explain why U.S. agencies are still unable to show a single case in which encryption has crippled a criminal investigation. According to annual reports presented to Congress since 1997, encryption wasn’t an obstacle to government wiretaps even once until 2012. Of the 3,576 wiretaps authorized in 2013, the government was bested by encryption in only nine cases. None of those cases involved terrorists, kidnappers or any of the other cyberbogeymen the FBI keeps warning about, and there’s no indication that encryption alone prevented any crimes from being solved.
So either government agencies are being incredibly modest or they’re simply hiding the fact that encryption isn’t a real problem because they already have the means to circumvent it.
Of course, giving police hacking powers presents a whole new set of problems. When should they be allowed to break into someone’s computer? How would a judge ensure that they’re hacking the right device and that innocent bystanders won’t be affected? How long should a police or government agency be allowed to exploit a commercial software vulnerability for hacking purposes?
Hacking isn’t the only way police can get access to encrypted communications. In most cases, a court will simply compel a suspect to surrender their passwords or encryption keys. And the four-digit PIN that protects your iPhone or Android can be easily cracked in a matter of days.
When it comes to encrypted messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Signal, another option for the government is to force companies to send a fake key to the target. Even though the companies can’t read their users’ messages, they still control the system that distributes the keys needed to encrypt them. That means the FBI could compel WhatsApp to send a suspect an FBI key instead of an intended recipient’s, allowing agents to decrypt the message.
These aren’t perfect solutions, but their targeted nature undoubtedly makes them better options than forcing tech companies to build backdoors for police. Security experts have warned again and again that you can’t create “golden keys” for the FBI that will be safe from Chinese hackers and Russian credit card thieves — a backdoor for one can be found and exploited by all.
The FBI keeps plugging its ears and saying there’s a way to make backdoors work. But so far, its only ideas are fantasies. Take the split key escrow system, in which a “trusted third party” such as the FBI holds a portion of the keys needed to decrypt data. Cryptographers rejected this concept nearly two decades ago.
Testifying before Congress on Wednesday (PDF), Matt Blaze, the cryptographer who famously discovered flaws in the NSA’s proposed Clipper Chip key escrow system, said:
Harsh technical realities make such an ideal solution effectively impossible, and attempts to mandate one would do enormous harm to the security and reliability of our nation’s infrastructure, the future of our innovation economy and our national security.
Amazingly, when Rep. Blake Farenthold, R-Texas, asked the panel of experts at the hearing whether anyone thought it was possible to build secure crypto backdoors, no one — including the FBI’s own expert witness — raised their hand. That law enforcement groups continue to ignore this broad consensus proves that their position relies on scaremongering and distortions.
These agencies need to accept that they can’t have their cake and eat it too. Criminals have always taken steps to avoid being caught, and if we’ve learned anything from the FBI’s takedown of the online drug bazaar Silk Road, it’s that even the strongest encryption and anonymity tools can’t stop people from making mistakes.
In asking for backdoors, the government is simply trying to double down on surveillance powers while putting the security of law-abiding citizens at risk — and inviting other countries to come knocking for golden keys of their own.
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ne of the funnier things in political journalism is the fact that, every time a Democratic senator runs for president, the National Journal -- home of Ron (Leadership!) Fournier -- concocts a survey purporting to show that the senator in question is the "most liberal" member of the Senate. John Kerry 
